LETTER: Blames Corps Of Engineers For Katrina's Destruction

June 25, 2013

In the editorial "75-Year-Old Hartford Levee System Needs Major Overhaul" [June 21, courantopinion,com], the writer states "When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, more than 50 levees and flood walls gave way, sending tens of billions of gallons of water roaring into the city, causing horrific death and destruction."

The fact of the matter is that the flooding of New Orleans was overwhelmingly and primarily the fault of the Army Corps of Engineers, which was solely responsible for designing and building the levee system its engineers knew to be flawed -- not the hurricane itself. Instead of correcting this, they lied about the status of the levees while squandering hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Had the Corps of Engineers done its job, Hurricane Katrina would have made much less news and would not suffer the fate of being referenced as a terrible "natural" disaster. Rather, it should be labeled a terrible engineering disaster. With the dissemination of correct information, the blame for the flooding of New Orleans will eventually shift from the hurricane to the agency which allowed it to affect the people of New Orleans -- the Army Corps of Engineers.